I haven't seen 'The Exorcist,' but I've seen a lot of pictures of the girl in it. So now I don't actually want to see it. She scares me so much. I don't know what it is, but even though it's quite old now, it still has the best and scariest make-up I've ever seen in my life.
Health-wise, I couldn't have said what my life expectancy would've been if I'd just carried on doing solid blocks of stand-up.
When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days - with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents - I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through.
Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity.
I'm so much more gratified by my life now that I have an expertise. I wake up every day thinking about a fairly small set of scientific questions all related to the psychology of achievement, and I'll never get bored of those questions. That's something I couldn't say to you when I was 22 or 25 or probably even 31.
Truth is, I've spent much of my life trying, unsuccessfully, to explode the myths about Texas.
When I saw 'Hercules,' my mind just exploded because I was extremely thin; I was insecure. I literally ran out of the theatre and started lifting things, anything I could think of - milk crates. I'm still lifting things. It changed my life.
Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.
I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.
I write in a journal daily. This extraordinary ritual has revolutionised my mindset, transformed my heartset, and generally influenced my life exponentially.
It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.
I love the very exposed, humorous, imperfect, never-trying to-pretend-to-be-perfect journey that I have been on in my life.
I'm often asked if I regret not going to Hollywood. I'm glad I didn't go, because if I had I wouldn't have my extended family, which is the fabric of my life. Only recently have I realised how special and unusual it is.
I was bankrolling the games, vetting the players, extending the credit. My life was really stressful.
I like the hot-cold, the sugar-salt, being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things - in the same film. Just as in my life, I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished.
I've had a lot of people pass away in my life. I guess it's all a matter of how you deal with your mortality - and recognizing that you are mortal. I'm trying to see what a gift life is and how quickly it can be extinguished, without any warning.
I spend an extraordinary amount of time in my car, so I can justify the expense. That's the only extravagance in my life - it's my car.
I'd been suffering all of my life. I think comedians and artists, we do that. We know how to be the life of the party and enjoy exuberance outside of pain.
There's always been in my life that tension between living and writing. For me, because I'm so physically exuberant, it was extra hard to sit still at the desk and put in the hours that you need to put in to write.
Whenever I go to New York or any European country, they say: 'Nawal, why don't you get a facelift?' I tell them, 'I am proud of my wrinkles. Every wrinkle on my face tells the story of my life. Why should I hide my age?'
